We would also like to thank Benjamin Juarez Echenique and Shoshi Gottesman for their many years of service on our board; they resigned earlier this month after 9 years.

In Mexico, we sent David Pérez Olmedo, conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of the Autonomous University of Chihuahua, and William Harvey, our founder, to the Sierra Tarahumara mountains from March 30 to April 6. While there, they donated 3 violins and 2 guitars from David’s family’s instrument shop, Educación Musical de Puebla. Check out this 3-minute reel about the instrument donations!

In the Philippines, from May 18 to 31, we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of our first project there by reviving our partnerships with our main partners, the Cartwheel Foundation, the Manila Symphony Orchestra, and Casa San Miguel. We will work with the Cartwheel Foundation, which fights for indigenous educational and cultural rights, to raise awareness regarding the ancestral land of the Tagbanua community. This collaboration will culminate in a concert in Manila on May 30. With the Manila Symphony’s Junior Orchestra, we will conduct master classes and perform a concert on May 23. We will present a violin master class at Casa San Miguel. Along with our founder, CiH will send violinists Rebecca Schlappich and Lo Mares and soprano Alize Rozsnyai on this project.

In Chile, at the end of July, our founder will conduct a residency the Toki Music School on Rapa Nui, one of the most remote islands on the planet. While there, he will offer violin students a master class and give a performance with renowned pianist and Toki co-founder Mahani Teave and pianist-composer Alejandro Arévalo, whose violin-piano piece “Ka Tangi te vie Hiva” they will premiere.

In Tunisia, during the last week of August, we will work with Atlas to revive the Tabarka Jazz Festival, which was first established in 1973 and has seen the participation of luminaries such as Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. We will underwrite the participation of renowned trumpeter Etienne Charles and his band. 

In Cameroon, we will send a small group of musicians to participate in an event on December 30 honoring Cha Cha music in Bonakanda village. We look forward to returning to Cameroon!

Finally, Afghan musicians continue to struggle to survive, given the return of the violently anti-music Taliban in 2021. Within Afghanistan, they cannot earn a living in music. Those who have managed to leave also fight to cover the costs of their emigration. We will offer small but significant financial support to six Afghan musicians, based on their circumstances and needs.

We continue to work with our partners to expand the reach of our projects. For the project in Philippines, the Mexican violinist Lo Mares to join us in order to represent the shared Spanish heritage of Mexico and the Philippines. For the project in Tunisia, we are working with Atlas to identify European jazz groups that will join Etienne Charles to help revive the Tabarka Jazz Festival.

Please join our many donors in helping connect people around the globe through the universal language of music. Make your tax-deductible donation today!

As these young audience members at our 2025 music festival in Zimbabwe would surely agree, our 20th anniversary year was a big success, thanks to donors like you: 

• We returned to Zimbabwe, where we worked with Revival Arts Trust Zimbabwe to present the 10th anniversary edition of the Pfumvudza Arts Festival. Check out the documentary about this extraordinary event: Flowers of Friendship.
• We taught young musicians at intensive summer camps in Tunisia, where we partnered with Atlas Music Academy, and Colombia, where we partnered with Festivando Bogotá. While this was our first year in Colombia, we have sustained our connection to Tunisia every year since our founding in 2005. Here is a documentary about the deep impact of our work in Tunisia on the young people who attend our camps: Songs in a Language We Made Up.
• We continue to support the musical life of the Rarámuri indigenous community in Mexico, as shown in Violins Crossing Canyons.
• We provided small grants to Afghan musicians, both in Afghanistan and those who have escaped, as they struggle to earn a living in light of the Taliban’s total ban on music.

We hope you will join us in keeping this work going as we look beyond our 20th anniversary. Next year, 2026, marks the 20th anniversary of our first visit to the Philippines. We will return to work with the Cartwheel Foundation to present music workshops for indigenous youth. In Tunisia, we hope to expand our work with Atlas Music Academy by reviving the Tabarka Jazz Festival. 

This Giving Tuesday, please support Cultures in Harmony as our melodies continue to connect hearts across the political and cultural divides of our world.

You can relive the action-packed Pfumvudza experience yourself by watching (and dancing along) to the documentary about the project, “Flowers of Friendship.”

Pfumvudza provided two days of programming for hundreds of attendees. Participating musical groups included primary school dance troupes, mbira and marimba ensembles, a prison band, reggae, and more. The theme this year was “fighting drug and substance abuse though creative arts.” The local Member of Parliament, the Hon. Vimbayi Mutokonyi, stopped by. A bouncy castle kept children entertained and numerous food vendors kept attendees fed.

Harare-based saxophonist Brad Sibiya and trumpeter Tibone Matikiti joined the three Cultures in Harmony musicians for a unique and memorable performance of a Scarlatti cantata, and the three CiH musicians stole hearts with their rendition of Oliver Mtukudzi’s “Neria,” perhaps the most beloved Zimbabwean song. 

We are very grateful to the Michael and Mary Ann Wells Charitable Trust, the primary sponsor of our work in Zimbabwe. We also thank Dr. Solomon Guramatunhu for hosting a benefit concert in Harare which helped us meet our budget goals for the festival. 

Local musicians and attendees praised the festival, which would not have been possible without Cultures in Harmony and its donors. Tendayi Kusaya, the director of the Rusape-based marimba group Sweet Dreamers, said that the festival is “a dream come true. It’s so difficult to get an event like this, where people come and do some African music: you don’t see it in Zimbabwe. For our kids, it’s a very great exposure. We are so happy.”

Albert Takarambwa, from the group Rovambira, appreciated the platform to showcase traditional Zimbabwean music and urged attendees to honor it, saying, “It’s who we are as Africans. We cannot run from our shadows.”

Please join Michael and Mary Ann Wells, Dr. Solomon Guramatunhu, and our many other donors by making your tax-deductible contribution to Cultures in Harmony today!

In Tunisia, singer Hanan Aseelah Davis, guitarist Colin Davin, and pianist Melinda Faylor will join violinist and CiH Executive Director William Harvey to teach at the Atlas Music Academy in Tabarka from July 23 to August 1. Since we will be working with young classical musicians, it is particularly inspiring to be able to report that this project is underwritten by the Balgley Family Charitable Foundation at the request of Noah Bendix-Balgley, concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic. His sponsorship will be tremendously inspiring to our students.

In Zimbabwe, singer Alize Francheska Rozsnyai and violinist Keamogetswe Magau will join our Executive Director to collaborate with RATZ (Revival Arts Trust Zimbabwe) to present the 10th anniversary of the Pfumvudza Arts Festival in Marondera on August 8 and 9; CiH and RATZ co-launched the festival in 2015. The festival will present a wide variety of musical and entertainment programming to audiences, ranging from marimba bands to a Scarlatti cantata, translated to English and arranged for performance with local musicians Tibone Matikiti, trumpet, and Brad Sibiya, tenor saxophone. We are thrilled that the Michael and Mary Ann Wells Charitable Trust is sponsoring our work in Zimbabwe and we are grateful for the hospitality and collaboration of Dr. Solomon Guramatunhu. Here is a documentary about the first Pfumvudza Festival.

In Colombia, the Michael and Mary Ann Wells Charitable Trust is also sponsoring the participation of our Executive Director as guest violin teacher and performer in Festivando Bogotá from August 16 to 23:

Taken together, these projects remind the public in Tunisia, Zimbabwe, and Colombia that some Americans still want to approach the rest of the world in a spirit of humble, respectful collaboration. We will teach, but also learn (as we listen to the dreams of our students in Tunisia and Colombia and collaborate with local musicians in Zimbabwe). 

In a time when it is more important than ever to extend a hand of friendship across cultural and national barriers, we invite you to join the Balgley Family Charitable Foundation and the Michael and Mary Ann Wells Charitable trust in supporting Cultures in Harmony today with a tax-deductible donation.

Major donors

We are excited and deeply grateful that two major donors share our commitment to forging connections across cultural and national barriers through the medium of music. Thank you to the Michael and Mary Ann Wells Charitable Trust and to the Balgley Family Charitable Foundation! They will both be acknowledged as the sponsors of our work around the world this year. If you would like to join them, please make a tax-deductible contribution today to Cultures in Harmony.

Mexico

The Mexico project is complete! From January 31 to February 3, we sent David Perez Olmedo (conductor of the orchestra of Chihuahua University) and our founder to the Sierra Tarahumara mountains of northern Mexico. Hosted by Romayne Wheeler, the pianist of the Sierra Tarahumara, they donated 2 violins and 2 guitars (generously contributed by Educación Musical de Puebla) to indigenous Rarámuri musicians in Retosachi and Huisuchi. Thank you to Jorge Ordoñez and Gaby Terrazas for hosting a benefit concert in Chihuahua that covered their travel to the Sierra. Please follow us on Instagram for more pictures from the Mexico project!

Afghanistan

We have spent our budget for Afghanistan already, sending much-needed support to four Afghan musicians, whose livelihood was cut off when the Taliban came back 3 years ago and made music illegal again. Many of these musicians are still trying to get to somewhere safe for them, and these small grants we give help them do just that.  Faisal writes: “I’m grateful and appreciate Cultures in Harmony’s support and help. And I used the support for my visa process and to get to my musical team in Iran and I’ll try my best to encourage the youth for music and cultural exchanges.” Erfan writes: “The money I received from Cultures in Harmony was spent for Pakistan visa processing, which I required to be able to travel to Pakistan for our USA DV lottery case checkup. As always, Cultures in Harmony has paved the way for us to solve one or more of our financial issues.”

Updates on our 20th Anniversary Projects

Our work in South America will be in Colombia, where CiH will help underwrite the participation of our founder when he teaches young musicians in August at Festivando Bogotá. The project in Congo has been postponed since security concerns around the city of Goma complicate the logistics. Those resources will be redirected towards our project in Zimbabwe.